


the night is gonna shake him up (so he waits for the warm dawn)

by sammyspreadyourwings



Series: Bingo 2020 [6]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Brian May's 1974 Hepatitis Diagnosis, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Protective John Deacon, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25828240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyspreadyourwings/pseuds/sammyspreadyourwings
Summary: John has a nightmare about Brian and his father and its hard for him to tell them apart.
Relationships: John Deacon/Brian May/Freddie Mercury/Roger Taylor
Series: Bingo 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863202
Kudos: 31
Collections: Dork Lovers Server Challenges





	the night is gonna shake him up (so he waits for the warm dawn)

**Author's Note:**

> Another not Brian pov I'm really expanding here   
> anyway please enjoy!

He is six.

That is Brian in front of him.

He is six and that is Brian in front of him.

John does not understand. Everything is as tall as it was when he is six, how he would have to claw desperately to see over the hospital bed and how the doctors looked so tall and imposing. Once he had thought he would like to be a doctor and make other people feel better when they were sick.

Hospitals for six years after that had been as familiar to him as his backyard.

Except now he is six and that’s Brian in front of him. John reaches up to claw his way onto the hospital bed. It should be different once he secures himself, he will look up and see that it is his dad.

But it stays Brian. His skin yellow and the fever making him sweat. His curls are matted down and unkempt. His hand is swollen from the sickness – both hands are. John has Brian’s father’s ring on his finger. He promised Brian that he would keep it.

That was on his adult hand as soon as he thinks it the ring slips from his finger and makes a tiny _ting_ as it hits the ground. The roll is loud, almost louder than being outside in a thunderstorm. John hops off the bed running after the ring, but it is moving too fast for his tiny legs to catch up to it. As he stumbles it rolls under the bed. John lunges for it, trying to grasp it in his hands.

His arms are not long enough, and he must crawl fully under the bed to grasp it. John wiggles his way out to the other side, a treasure tucked firmly against his chest. He pops up and turns around to show Brian his victory.

The bed has been made. Military tight corners are holding the sheet taught. It looks like no one has laid on it either. Not a single wrinkle or crease. He does not see any of the machines that Brian had been hooked up to. No disarray that Freddie or Roger had left. He hears the door open and he turns around.

It is the doctor. He has the same bushy mustache and the same bad comb-over that he had when John had seen him for the first time. But he is six, so he is seeing him for the first time. He holds tightly onto Brian’s ring and stares back at the perfectly made bed.

John looks back at him, wondering where Brian had gone.

“How did you get in here?” The doctor asks, “you should be at home.”

“The man,” John says, “what happened?”

“You know what happened son,” the doctor says sadly.

John shakes his head. No. Brian was recovering – his father had not – but Brian was. They had been joking just hours before. He looks back to the bed but now there is a human-shaped body under the sheet. The doctor puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You need to see this.”

He doesn’t. It isn’t. John knows who is under that sheet, but he does not want him to be under the sheet. His heels dig into the ground, but he is pushed forward by the gentle hand on his back like he had wheels on his feet he glides effortlessly to the bed. A second doctor, one with rubber gloves up to his elbows reaches down to pull the sheet from the body.

John sees dark hair –

“Brian is alive,” whispers harshly as he sits up.

He gasps and moves his eyes around the room, frowning when he realizes that he is in his bedroom. Back in their flat, in London. John tilts his head down, Roger is face down, his head just angled so that he will not suffocate and is snoring loudly. His white T-shirt, too long for him – has ridden up leaving a batch of skin revealed on his back.

John grabs the blankets from the end of the bed, unsure of who kicked them off. Roger would sleep through a typhoon, so long as he took his medication, and it seems as though tonight he has. He wraps them around Roger who burrows into them, murmuring something about pineapples and cats, before stilling.

There are only two people. One he knows is (hopefully) asleep in a hospital bed on the other side of town but his third partner is a wanderer at the best of times. John slides out of bed, his ears prickling at the piano playing down the hall. He shuffles his feet and tries to rub the tears from his eyes. The nightmare’s grasp lingers only with the hurt it brought up.

Brian is fine, the doctors were speaking encouragingly about him coming home in a few days. His skin lost the yellow tinge and he was talking for more than an hour. John knows all of this and now that he is awake he can place each piece of evidence in front of him and prove to himself that Brian is fine and that they won’t find him under a sheet in a too-cold room.

Freddie is playing that strange melody he has not given to a song yet. John taps along to the beat, waiting for a natural stopping point. Once Freddie fades out volume John clears his throat.

“The bed is already too big with just one of us missing,” John says softly, “what are you doing up?”

“Oh, nothing. The call of the night.”

John hums and walks forward so that he can wrap around Freddie. He places his chin on top of the dark waves and sways to the ticking of the clock.

“What are you doing up?”

“Nightmare,” John says mildly, “woke up and saw you weren’t there.”

Freddie taps a hand against the back of his, “bad nightmare?”

“Familiar one. Just replaced the characters.”

“We’ll see Brimi tomorrow, love. I’m sure he’s given the staff a hard time, asking all sorts of questions.”

“I rather hope he has been sleeping.”

That earns him a laugh as Freddie turns around and hugs his middle, “our sweet Bri? Sleeping?”

John chuckles too, “perhaps that is a bit of a wild dream.”

Freddie stands up and gives John a light kiss on the lips, “he is fine, John.”

“I know,” John says and then yawns, “but let us get back to bed before Rog turns into an ice block.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, leave your thoughts and comments below!


End file.
